I’ve come late in life to Astrid Lindgren’s famous stories about a funny, resourceful, rebellious nine-year-old. I can see why she has influenced legions of women from Michelle Obama to Madonna and why Mike Akers, who collaborated with Sally Cookson on her productions of Peter Pan, Treasure Island and Jane Eyre, has chosen to turn these picaresque tales about a supposed pirate’s eccentric daughter into a delightful seasonal show.

If Cookson is one theatrical influence, Kneehigh is clearly another, since the music is by Stu Barker who has long been their resident composer. The actors all double as instrument-playing musicians with the exception of Emily-Mae as the eponymous heroine.

With her stiffly braided pigtails and parti-coloured stockings, she looks dead right. More importantly, she captures Pippi’s mix of anarchy and altruism: when a teacher presumptuously asks her how much seven and five make, she refuses to help her out if she doesn’t know, but, when someone has to be saved from a blazing building, it is Pippi who comes to the rescue. Emily-Mae also puts across Barker’s songs, which he dubs Gypsy swing, with tremendous verve.

If the stories celebrate an individual, this production by Jesse Jones and Helena Middleton is essentially democratic in that the eight-strong cast exhibit their multitasking skills. I was especially struck by Hanora Kamen, who niftily nips between a bossy teacher, a pet monkey and a punning cop, by Alex Parry as a series of pompous authority figures, and by Scott Brooks who, when he dons a pair of specs as a prissy bourgeois matron, looks alarmingly like Jacob Rees-Mogg.

But the virtue of the show is that it conveys the spirit of the books and suggests that Pippi belongs in the great line of rule-breakers from the medieval Till Eulenspiegel to Richmal Crompton’s William. I came out with a smile on my face, which is fortunate since this show marks the end of a chapter in my life as a critic and allowed me to exit stage left happily chuckling.

• At Royal and Derngate, Northampton, until 31 December.